If you’re lucky, a cat or mouse will only scratch you.
If you’re unlucky, they might just scar you for life…
“Mommy, Mommy! Where is the other half of Whiskers1Not the cat’s real name, but not because I’m trying to protect that dumb-asses’ privacy, but because I just can’t remember it.?!?”
I can still vividly remember a time when shutting the car door all by myself was an achievement worth celebrating. Especially because back then our family vehicle was this ugly green, late 1970’s certifiable land yacht. I don’t recall the exact make and model–probably an Oldsmobile or Buick, no doubt–but the body of this mechanical beast had to have been made out of pure, solid iron.
For all practical purposes, there was very little that separated the front passenger door from it’s close cousin, the bank vault door. So, yeah, getting my little body to muster up the muscular strength of a 10-year-old (or two 5-year-olds, or ten 1-year-olds), and getting that door shut was something that was very much pat-myself-on-the-back-worthy.
However, when that big day finally arrived when my wildest dreams came to fruition, things didn’t play out exactly as I had imagined they would. Did I get a ticker-tape parade for being such a Big Boy? Was there confetti streaming down from the car’s rafters to enhance this magical moment? Was there any patting-on-the-back, whether by my own hand or that of another?
Let’s see…”no,” “nope,” and “negatory.” Does that answer my2I really wanted to type “your questions” here, but let’s be honest: you weren’t the one asking them. questions? Yes, it does.
Yet, I remember that milestone so clearly.
For all the wrong reasons, of course.
After a couple of really good tugs, I had finally overcome the friction on the door hinges, and to my sheer delight, the door quickly gained momentum and swung solidly shut. Well, almost solidly shut…
To my horror, in that split second between getting over the frictional energy barrier and the door latching in place, our idiot cat Whiskers–or whatever his name was–decided he wanted to come on our trip with us and, like a half-drunk motorist trying to race a train across a railroad crossing, he gambled when the odds were not “ever in his favor.”3I almost instantly regreted including a reference from The Hunger Games here… That little dipshit actually thought he could make it into the car before the door shut all the way.
To his credit though, it turns out he was half right.
The door started swinging shut, Whiskers appeared out of nowhere and prepared to launch, and all I could do was be awash in a feeling of helplessness as I had just enough time to not only realize what was about to happen, but to also realize that there was no way I could stop that door once I got it moving.
“NOOOOOOOOoooooooooo…!”
KER-CHUNK!
Next thing I knew, with my little eyes I was spying exactly one half of a cat inside the car–the front half, rib cage to nose, to be exact. And thus leaving only one logical conclusion as to where the other half of Whiskers was–outside the car.
Holy. Sh*t. Batman.
Had I just guillotined our precious feline friend right in two4TOOL reference!?!? Hello, instant childhood PTSD!
While I sat there, dazed and traumatized, Mom acted quick on her feet, leaning over and opening the door back up lickety-split (fun fact: it’s much easier to get those doors to budge when you’re a grown-ass woman).
…And just like a classic magic trick, voilà! The hind quarters and tail of ol’ Whiskers reappeared!
By some miracle, I had not, in fact, severed his spine. And apparently all his other internal organs got safely smushed to either inside or outside the car upon impact, and had slid right back into place once the door was re-opened. So, in the end, that lucky little bastard turned out just fine and no worse for the wear.
I, on the other hand, not so much. Verily, with a mere 4 years of worldly experience under my belt, I could put my hand over my little heart and swear to you, “I was in no way emotionally prepared for this…”
“Professor A., I think you are ready to learn how to run one of our scientific studies end-to-end. First things first, though: specimen preparation.”
It was halfway through my first year of working in a small-animal MRI lab, and my boss, Four-Quart Willie,5Not his real name, but if you can figure out what this real (professional) name is, and why I use this moniker for him, I think you would chuckle lightly to yourself as much as I do every time I type it. loved to feed the ego of those of us freshly off the PhD assembly line by referring to us “Professors.”
Indeed, it was a very effective way to convince me to move away from my expertise in image and data processing and/or wrangling, and to start getting my hands dirty directly dealing with the rodents his lab loved to study so much: mice.
Now, I had exactly zero interest in the whole proposal, but how could I resist someone who esteemed me at the level of professor? Amiright?
At this point, it is critical to understand that the bread-and-butter of our scientific endeavors is what is called ex vivo MRI scans. Instead of gently sedating a mouse or rat and scanning them while they are alive and breathing (that would be in vivo), we yada yada ya…and scan only their extracted skull and brain.
To get an idea of why this is preferred, here are comparative examples of in vivo (left) and ex vivo (right) MRI images of a mouse brain:
Take a gander at those two pics, and you tell me whether a scientist such as myself would prefer those little rascals dead or alive? Yeah, the choice is pretty clear: those mice are better off dead to us.
Anyways, the very next week I had the privilege of being trained in the ways of “specimen preparation”: the aforementioned yada yada ya that encompasses whatever happens in between “mouse starts day like every other day with a snack and a good poo” and “mouse’s skull and brain end up floating in a tiny sealed tube, ready to be scanned.”
I should also mention another very important thing to know about this business, and that is that animal comfort and safety is taken very seriously. There are like, a million-thousand rules and regulations about handling animals involved in experiments, especially when it comes to what we in the biz call “sacrificing” them–aka killing them until they are dead. We have to follow strict procedures to minimize any suffering they might endure in the process.
With such humane guardrails in place, I hadn’t given much thought to that whole part of the process when I walked into our surgery room for training that particular morning. I had no doubt in my mind that Step One would involve something similar to, say, putting them in a small box and, oh, I don’t know, maybe pumping it full of carbon dioxide, followed up with a barely noticeable shot in the tail that would dreamily send them off to never-never land.
Or, as I like to call it, “gently leading them into the dark.” Sounds almost…romantic, doesn’t it?6Probably because it hearkens memories of that Death Cab For Cutie song, “I Will Follow You Into The Dark.”
Well…at least I got the first sub-step half right. You know, the part about the mild sedation to initially knock them out.
After that? Oh boy…how do I put this?
Yada yada ya…and the next thing I know, I’m staring at a very much still-living mouse laying on its back, all 4 paws pinned back in what appeared to be some sort of sacrilegious attempt to accurately recreate a murine version of the whole Jesus-on-the-cross scene.
And how did I know it was still alive, you might be wondering? Did I feel for its pulse? Did I hold a mirror up to its tiny nose and look for it to fog up?
Nope. Nothing that subtle.
No, all I had to do was look at its heart, and…yup, still pounding away. Oh, did I mention that its chest cavity was split wide ----- open? Yeah, rib cages pinned to the side and everything.
I was in complete shock at the sight of its little lungs still rapidly expanding and contracting, its heart furiously pumping, and the rest of all its innards, just hanging out doing their thang, on display for the whole ----- world to see.
I kinda blacked out most of what happened after that, but I’m pretty sure once it was all said and done, I went and found a secluded spot outside and sobbed gently for a good 5 minutes.
I mean, what the ----- did I just witness???
It was, as we say in the business, a real mind- ----- .
Of course, when I went home that evening to The Boss Lady and she asked me how my day went, I had to relive the horror all over again.
Verily, with a mere 34 years of worldly experience under my belt, I had to put my blood-stained hand over my little heart and swear to her, “Oh Sweet Baby Jesus, I was in no way emotionally prepared for this…”
Content created on: 25/26/27 March 2022 (Fri/Sat/Sun)
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